November 18, 2006

22 comments:

And yet, in today's society, this teacher didn't fear for his job BEFORE handing this assignment out.

Think about how much effort this required. He had to think up the phrases, put all the phrases into a find-a-word pattern, make copies of it, etc, etc.

This wasn't any spur-of-the-moment mistake made in the heat of passion. The heat of passion just doesn't last that long.

The sad fact is that once these nuts figure out that making stupid puzzles to convey their hatred of America only gets them fired from their jobs, they'll determine that the only TRUE way to destroy America is to start killing people.

This man was driven by a "bible" which says that some people on earth are worse than pigs, and so killing them could hardly be offensive.

Are his actions "insane" when placed into that context? Or merely a natural conclusion resulting from his religious upbringing?

The CAIR "outrage" press release will be issued in about 5 more minutes.

"When I made the assignment, I was upset and angry about a story I recently saw on the news. If any message appears, it is more of a message to myself, not to my students."

Even if we believe him, does it matter? The question is surely the actual audience (or, perhaps, the audience that a reasonable person would anticipate), not the intended recipient. If, for example, he had left a pornographic magazine on his desk and left the class alone with it for an hour, it would be no defense that it was more for his interest than for his students. Suppose you had a teacher who had handed out a wordsearch that asked students to identify six words that apply to the Bush Administration, and the only words discernable were things like "liar," "murderer," "evil" and so on (or, be bipartisan about it, for the Clinton administration, "philanderer," "untrustworthy," "perjurer" and so on). Is that improper indoctrination, or is it a defense that he was upset and angry about a story he recently read in the New York Times that was critical of Bush, and that any message that appeared was more directed to his gratification as the person having to grade the assignment, rather than to his students as the person "finding" the words?

You also have to wonder what content he teaches at his other job (teaching Arabic) (likely in a Saudi subsidized school). I expect that he and his peers are producing a more radical next generation of Muskims in America. The melting pot may not be working.

I think that these sorts of things continue to sensitize the public to the potential threat.

Now, what if a teacher taught that the US government intentionally murdered 3000 of its own citizens in order to start a war resulting in the thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi deaths? What should we think of a school that didn't fire that teacher?

Gerry said..."[As to the idea that] [t]he heat of passion just doesn't last that long[,] [a] lot of human history, especially including but not limited to Muslim history, suggests that this is wrong. The heat of passion can last generations."

Indeed; the fire ignited in January 1973 has burned hotter with practically every passing year. "Roe fanned into life an issue that has inflamed our national politics in general, and has obscured with its smoke the selection of Justices to th[e] [Supreme] Court in particular, ever since." Casey, 505 U.S. at 995—996 (1992) (Scalia, dissenting). Do not look to the diminishing of that heat any time soon.